AltWeeklies Wire
'No Impact Man': What’s the Big To-Do About Doing With Less?new
Is No Impact Man a landmark documentary? Is the book a Walden for our time? Not really. Both, in a modest, agreeable fashion, tell us what we already know: We buy too much, we waste too much, and we're using up resources disproportionate to our presence on the planet.
Seattle Weekly |
Brian Miller |
09-28-2009 |
Reviews
The Director of 'It Might Get Loud' Talks Guitar Heroesnew
With an Oscar on the mantel for producing and directing An Inconvenient Truth, Davis Guggenheim decided to take a break from politics. So why not sit back, relax, and turn the stereo up to 11?
Seattle Weekly |
Brian Miller |
08-31-2009 |
Profiles & Interviews
'Cold Souls' Has a Charlie Kaufman Premise, but it's Not a Charlie Kaufman Movienew
Sophie Barthes is a French writer-director, and this is her first feature. And it's no great criticism to say that her ideas, well, they get away from her.
Seattle Weekly |
Brian Miller |
08-24-2009 |
Reviews
'Art & Copy': How to Sell Soap and Sex and VWsnew
However stirring these vintage campaigns and their graying creators may be for ad junkies like me, Doug Pray fails at analysis. His film is simply a tribute. And linking the ad biz to cave art -- well, that's just idiotic.
Seattle Weekly |
Brian Miller |
08-24-2009 |
Reviews
'The Garden' is Another Eco-Borenew
This documentary fails to tease out the dirty particulars of how a city-owned lot in South Central L.A., bought to be a garbage incinerator site in the '80s, somehow reverted back to its owner, and at what price. It's more insinuation than journalism.
Seattle Weekly |
Brian Miller |
08-10-2009 |
Reviews
'Ex-Drummer': Battle of the Belgian Bar Bandsnew
This gutter-punk cult movie about an unlikely bar band's rise and fall might've been scripted during a drunken Russian-roulette session among Charles Bukowski, Lars von Trier, Harmony Korine, and Irvine Welsh.
Seattle Weekly |
Brian Miller |
08-10-2009 |
Reviews
Tags: Ex-Drummer, Koen Mortier
'(500) Days of Summer': We Heart Zooey Deschanelnew
Can there be a thing as too much cute? This is the dilemma for Summer (also the name of Zooey Deschanel's scary-adorable character), which plunges us with twee abandon into a relationship gone bad.
Seattle Weekly |
Brian Miller |
07-20-2009 |
Reviews
'Humpday': Would-Be Pornographers Talk About Transgressive Artnew
Let's save the snickering bromance jokes for another day, another movie. Seattle director Lynn Shelton is no Judd Apatow, nor does she mean Humpday to be a raunch-com.
Seattle Weekly |
Brian Miller |
07-13-2009 |
Reviews
'The Hurt Locker': Kathryn Bigelow's Ticket to the Oscarsnew
This film is a career best for Bigelow: tense, compressed, and often wordless for page after page of action. With the field opened up for 10 nominees this year, this movie has a lock on an Oscar nom.
Seattle Weekly |
Brian Miller |
07-13-2009 |
Reviews
'Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone': C'mon, Dad, Give Me the Giant Battle-Bot!new
Evangelion 1.0 lacks the sophistication, darkness, and violence of Ghost in the Shell or Akira. It's a tamer work that may improve -- through releases 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 -- as Shinji starts to shave and possibly acts upon his hormonal urges.
Seattle Weekly |
Brian Miller |
07-06-2009 |
Reviews
'The Last International Playboy': Peter Pan as Serial Daternew
Starting like Girls Gone Wild and finishing more like Jay McInerney, this indie tale of a rake's progress is considerably sweeter than the marketing and early scenes would indicate.
Seattle Weekly |
Brian Miller |
06-22-2009 |
Reviews
'Food, Inc.': Michael Pollan Tells Us How to Eatnew
Problem is, no matter how much many viewers will (inevitably) agree with all the eat-local, food-miles, and change-big-agribusiness arguments here, we've already had a stomachful from prior books and films. Who else is this movie trying to reach?
Seattle Weekly |
Brian Miller |
06-22-2009 |
Reviews
'Revanche': Crime and Self-Punishment in Austrianew
This deliberate, meticulous heist-gone-wrong flick eschews all the usual excitement of crime. Instead, Austrian writer-director Gotz Spielmann concentrates on the slow buildup to a bank job and its simmering moral aftermath.
Seattle Weekly |
Brian Miller |
05-04-2009 |
Reviews
Sci-Fi Revival Without Causenew
This deadpan homage hardly lifts an eyebrow at the aliens, horny teens, eccentric scientists, and dopey lawmen in the small desert town where a flying saucer lands. We know these conventions, from The Blob to The Day the Earth Stood Still, which Alien Trespass dutifully recreates. But why?
Seattle Weekly |
Brian Miller |
04-06-2009 |
Reviews
John Malkovich Is Great; the Movie Is Gentlenew
Malkovich's Buck possesses what The Great Buck Howard lacks: the single-minded, lesson-free compulsion to entertain.
Seattle Weekly |
Brian Miller |
03-23-2009 |
Reviews
